About an hour after announcing the resignation of head football coach Hugh Freeze amid an ongoing NCAA investigation and reports that he once called an escort service from his university-issued phone, Ole Miss officials gave a press conference in which they said Freeze left because of a pattern of “moral turpitude” in his personal life. It would appear, in short, that Hugh Freeze had some sex.
The discovery stemmed from a public records request earlier this month, which required Freeze to release his “work-related” phone records from six days back in January 2016. Athletic director Ross Bjork said that Freeze redacted his personal calls from those records before releasing them, although no explanation was given for how that was done or what oversight, if any, was in place. But there was one call of note that was not redacted, and that would appear to be the previously-reported one-minute call to an escort service with a Detroit area code.
Bjork said this was the only time that Freeze called this particular number in his years at Ole Miss, and while they originally chalked it up to a misdial, they then did a further analysis of Freeze’s phone records—discovering a “pattern of conduct that is not consistent with our expectations.” As of yesterday, he said, that pattern appeared to be “concerning.” When Vitter and Bjork confronted Freeze last night, the coach admitted “the conduct” before offering his resignation this afternoon.
Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter and Bjork described discovering a pattern in Freeze’s phone records that was “totally unrelated to the NCAA case” but still concerning enough to lead to his resignation.
The introduction of the press conference is below.